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DR. SAM REHNBORG: LOOKING
BACK TO THE FUTURE When he contemplates the future, Dr. Sam Rehnborg thinks of the scientific analysis underway on the Australian Kakadu plum and the Chinese Haw berry, and the advent of individually-tailored health supplement regimes designed to help fight specific diseases. But he cannot look forward without also looking back with admiration for his late father’s incredible foresight. While working in China in the l920s, Rehnborg Snr. was among hundreds of foreigners confined to a Shanghai compound by revolutionary forces. Worried about the meagre diet and fearing beriberi, he supplemented his rations by cooking up a stew of all the leafy green plants to hand. When he and his fellow stew-consuming prisoners emerged almost a year later with their health intact, Rehnborg was certain that he had made a vital discovery. With the science of nutrition still in its infancy, he created the original Nutrilite food supplements in l934, pioneering today’s billion dollar industry. Dr. Carl ‘Sam’ Rehnborg still holds to his father’s lifelong philosophy that natural is best. But he can also envisage a time when—thanks to DNA, genetics, and detailed information from blood and urine patterns—individual analyses will be incredibly sophisticated. So sophisticated that Nutrilite will be able to tailor supplement recommendations to take into account each customer’s family history and health predispositions. Dr. Sam is particularly enthusiastic about the thought of designing supplement, food and exercise programmes to help prevent people from winding up with their ancestors’ health problems. ‘If your family had high blood pressure, there’s a pretty good chance that your risk is higher," he explains. "And I can put you on a regimen now so that you won’t have it. My vision is that we’ll be able to tackle everybody on an individual basis. We can’t quite do that yet, but pretty soon we’ll be able to. With the advent of the internet, we’ll also be able to stay in touch on a one-on-one coaching basis." Few of us can achieve the ideal diet or grow our own fruit and vegetables and eat straight from our gardens. Throw into the equation fast foods and the high stress of office jobs and Dr. Sam believes that supplements are all the more vital to keep our diet and health in balance. And phytochemicals, the naturally-ocurring compounds in plants, represent the new wave. "No question that’s where the future is," he says. "Scientists call them phytochemicals, we coined the term Phytofactors. There are breakthroughs almost every month. Plants produce these materials to protect themselves. Our diet should protect us the same way. "We’re doing work in Israel on a tomato that I can’t say is so wonderfully tasty but its beta-carotene content, particularly the carotinoid Lycopene, is higher. We harvest acerola cherries for their vitamin C when they’re green. They taste awful but have the highest phytochemical content and vitamin C content then. The luscious red cherries they ultimately grow into are much more loaded with sugar and tasty things but don’t have nearly the nutritional value. "We are studying phytochemicals from all over the world and finding some interesting fruits and vegetables we had not known about before with some very interesting phytochemical properties. So we’re trying to understand these and begin to build our arsenal of phytochemical weapons, so to speak, to enhance human nutrition." A major project underway in Australia involves the scientific and nutritional study of the Kakadu plum, long used by Aborigines and higher in vitamin C than even the acerola cherry. In China, scientists are looking at the Haw berry, a red berry customarily coated with caramel and sold on the streets as candy. "It’s been around in Chinese lore and medicine for a thousand years and has all kinds of positive cardiovascular properties," Dr. Sam points out. The Nutrilite approach to health puts the focus on prevention, supplemented with conventional medicine when it becomes necessary. "For example, when is Alzheimers a disease, and when is it having slight learning problems?" asks Dr. Sam. "It’s a very fine line. Alzheimers is a major problem and if I’ve got it in my family, I want to take steps to make sure that I’m getting the kind of nutrition that’s going to prevent that problem from surfacing. "Once I’ve got overt Alzheimers, I’d better be under the care of a physician because then there are other medications that can help me. But we’re trying to prevent people from getting there in the first place." For the huge population of ageing baby-boomers, Dr. Rehnborg believes quality of life will be of paramount importance in the millennium. "The goal is obviously the guy who dies on the golf course or in his garden," he says. "That’s what everybody dreams will happen at age 100 or 88 or whatever. The idea is that you live vigorously with lots of energy for the longest time possible, and the period of old age and senility is as short as possible. The best chances for that are to start taking care of yourself the day you’re born." The key is in educating consumers to think longterm. "My father faced that problem," Dr. Sam points out. "He said, ‘What you’re selling really is nutritional insurance. Do people buy insurance for their home because they think it’s going to burn down tomorrow? No, they get it just so they’re covered.’ "Well, you don’t buy automobile insurance because you’re going to have a wreck tomorrow either. Does making sure your body has its optimal nutrition mean you’re going to come down tomorrow with Alzheimers or heart disease? No. I’m just taking the steps now to make sure that I don’t have that problem. " At 63, Dr. Rehnborg is a walking advertisement for good health but he is a moderate not a fanatic when it comes to healthy eating. "I’ll eat some junk food occasionally, but that’s why you have Nutrilite!" he laughs. "I’m a great believer in eating as many vegetables as I can. But I do like the occasional piece of meat, the occasional dirty dessert and a drop of wine, occasionally. My wife is an awesome cook. She’s Italian so we eat lots of garlic, tomatoes, onions and pasta. I’m blessed with wonderful food. "We are also avid exercisers. We’re big into running, tennis, golf and scuba diving. I have a small gym in the house and we have the beach for running and biking." Dr. Sam and his wife of 20 years, Francesca, 46 (an ex-Miss San Francisco) live in beautiful Laguna, California with their two daughters, Kori, 16, and Jenna, 13. Dr. Sam also has a son, Rod, 32, and daughter, Lisa, 42, from a previous marriage. (Lisa works for the family firm, handling Nutrilite’s human resources.) Any look at the future inevitably includes the complex subject of GM which has long interested Dr. Sam. He understands the controversy in the U.K. surrounding genetically modified products. Nutrilite is the company that back in the ‘50s launched BT, the first biological insecticide in America. The government approval process took over 7 years. Today, most of the world’s corn is BT corn which resists destructive insects. "We’re moving forward in science and I don’t think you can stop it," Dr. Sam obvserves, "so the key thing then probably becomes more intensive safety studies. And thinking it through a little bit more carefully in regards to things like superweeds and what things like BT corn may do to beneficial butterflies. "Natural is best, that’s the approach we try to take. Are we perfect at it here? Probably not as perfect as we’d like to be. But the more we know, the more I think we understand that you’d better make sure you abide by the natural laws of the universe in anything you do. I’m a great believer in staying close to nature. "I’m not sold on GMO materials. I think we need to study the issue. You can’t bury your head in the sand. Understanding it is going to lead, probably, to the cures of lots of major diseases that are going to affect mankind and animals today. We have to understand it, and then think, ‘How do we best use this in a way that’s positive?’" Alive,
Because Life's for Living magazine, UK, 2001 |